The two of them against the world.
This almost felt the same. Almost.
“This is lovely,” she said, the words becoming all the more intense as he began unloading the picnic basket and revealing the contents. Cheese and mushroom tart and puff pastry chicken galette. Not to mention cinnamon rolls that had been put in a thermal container to keep them warm.
It was just so... so thoughtful in a way she couldn’t imagine anyone else ever being.
Her stomach went hollow, because it wasn’t them against the world right now. It was them, living in their very messy lives. Well, her life was messy. His was what he’d made it, nothing more, nothing less.
She swallowed hard.
“Thank you. This is making up for the reception dinner I didn’t get to have.”
She opted to grab a cinnamon roll while it was still sticky and hot. Dessert first. Another thing that new Rue did, she decided.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
He surprised her by taking out a bottle of wine next.
“You don’t even like wine,” she said.
“But I knew that you would like it,” he responded.
He filled her glass halfway, and she noticed he didn’t take any.
“Are you the designated navigator?”
“Someone has to be, Ruby. You’re a loose cannon.”
They sat for a long while, eating, making light conversation. She asked him about the building happening at King’s Crest, and he told her how they had weddings lined up for the whole summer.
She wasn’t sure how she’d feel about seeing other people’s weddings.
Right now it seemed like it might be okay.
She lay back on the blanket and looked up at the gray sky. Feeling warm out there in the middle of the snow, and oddly cocooned.
It had always been like this with him.
She sat up when he moved, and he took a step away from the blanket and stood on the edge of the mountainside, looking down at the view below. There was something about seeing him like that that made her heart cramp painfully. And she became aware of how often lately her heart did things when she looked at Justice.
He turned his head to the side, and her eyes came to rest on his square, hard-cut jaw, the curve of his lips. His blue eyes. He had been so damned handsome in his tuxedo, but out here, with that black cowboy hat on his head, his jacket on, beat-up jeans that molded to his thighs, he was... him.
Not the man who went out to the bar and charmed women, but the mansheknew.
The one that thought everything through, even his debauchery. The one who had to decide to keep things shallow, because deep in his core he wasn’t that kind of man. He was loyal. He was true. In ways that people who didn’t really know him would never fully understand. Then he turned to face her and it was like getting hit in the head with a rock.
He was so handsome. She knew that. She knew he was handsome. She would have to be a fool not to recognize that. But it hit her then different.
Because he was the kind of handsome that knew how to make women lose their minds. That knew how to make them set aside their better judgment, trade it right away for a night in his bed, in his arms. She understood them. Right then, she understood. She wanted to make that feeling go away. Wanted to make that revelation disappear. She didn’t want to look down at his hands and notice that they were big and rough and strong. And then remember the times when he held her. Like on the night of the bachelorette party when he had picked her up off the ground and those rough hands had made contact with her thigh. She’d dismissed it then. She just hadn’t let herself linger on it. But for some reason now she was lingering.
His lips quirked upward into a smile, and she saw her friend again. But she couldn’t quite get that other image out of her mind. Or the memory of his hands on her skin to fade.
“You ready to go?”
“Sure,” she said, feeling a little bit dizzy.
“Did it live up to your expectations?”
